the key to happiness

reflections from a year ago

The building looks like an old plantation

And they just built a college around it.

Under the porch,

Hidden so it won’t show up on pamphlets

High School juniors get in the mail,

Is where the wretches reluctantly surrender

To the pressures of madness.

Over a steaming cup of Chai tea

A folksy doctor keeps a clipboard

Low enough I can see he’s taking notes

But at such an angle I can’t tell what he’s writing;

That’s what you learn in graduate school.

Every student gets six visits, but you can have more if necessary

He tells me at the end of every session after the second.

He picks up my iPod and scrolls through

With his boney fingers and yellow nails.

This music is too depressing. It’s probably not helping.

I tell him I’ll stop listening to it

And while I’m at it

I’ll stop writing poetry too

And thinking about lost days

That are exponentially better through the mind’s sepia tone.  

Do you want me to be happy

Like a plastic yellow button with a smiley face

So you can brush your hands together

After chalking another tally under the “cured” column?

Across the street at the 7-11

A three dollar pack of smokes and a bottom shelf bottle of wine

Do more to bring the vaudeville smile

Out from behind the clouds

Than textbooks on legs

With an itchy prescription pad ever could.